Woody Guthrie’s Only Novel Published Posthumously

Though primarily a song writer and essayist, Oklahoma’s folk hero Woody Guthrie also managed to write a work of fiction about the historic Dust Bowl.

The book “House of Earth” was released Febuary 5, 2013, decades after Woody’s death on October 3, 1967. According to Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, “He always wrote to be heard.”

The historian Douglas Brinkley and actor Johnny Depp are helping to make his wish “to be heard” an even greater reality than already seen through his songs and essays. Brinkley, while working on a biography of Bob Dylan, came across the unpublished novel in his research and made the decision to pursue bringing the work to life from out of the dust.